The Fortnightly Rant

In 1996, German film-maker Roland Emmerich released the movie “Independence Day.” To his delight, and the surprise of some, the American public turned out to have a huge appetite for seeing aliens blow up the White House. Despite the passage of time—including 12 years of Republican administration—the White House is still more or less intact.  Eight years later Emmerich released “The Day After Tomorrow.” This disaster flick’s big gimmick was a new global ice age triggered by the collapse of the formerly obscure Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current [AMOC]. Overnight, temperatures drop past 100° below, and a storm surge drowns New York. Then things get truly …

Read more

Another fortnight spent scanning the headlines, searching for any glimmer of a glimpse of a shred of a sliver of a hope for any sort of national reconciliation… . Any luck? Of course not. How absurd. No sign of any such chimera was to be found. As the nation’s oldest newspaper, we accept our responsibility and blame ourselves. Far too often, in attempting to provide the best approximation possible of the truth as it stands at a given moment, we have yielded to temptation and used language that was less than moderate. Whenever those in leadership roles—whether high and mighty, as in the halls of …

Read more

You don’t become the nation’s oldest newspaper by turning up your nose at technical innovations. So, when it comes to new wrinkles, we’re old hands. We also try to live up to that old yankee creed, “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” So, to conserve scarce resources such as editorial brain power, we rely on an AI algorithm to select the topic for our Fortnightly Rant. This time around, it spit out this: “the 2024 Presidential Election.” Naturally, the first thought that sprung to mind was… Well, it wasn’t really a thought, it was more of a groan. Two …

Read more

Well, here we are now. Sheesh. It’s like life is just a never-ending process of trying to get used to things you never imagined could ever happen. Eventually it will end, of course, but what the hell. We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it. In the meantime, stuff—if the reader will kindly pardon the euphemism—is in fact happening. So, let’s dig in. Who’s got the manure fork? * Former President, primary front-runner, presumptive Republican nominee, and Energizer Blowhard™ Donald J. Trump was charged with 37 felonies in Miami on Tuesday. Here’s how Fox News treated the event: In case that’s hard to read—and …

Read more

Our paper goes to press this fortnight only a few hours before the U.S. House is scheduled to take a momentous vote: whether to permit the Treasury to pay such debts as the legislature has incurred already, or to refuse and plunge the world’s economy into a chaotic maelstrom. Vote “Yes” and the world goes on about its business. Vote “No” and you unleash chaos. For most people, this would seem to be a straightforward proposition and a fairly easy choice. We are dealing with Congress, though, so it’s all a little more complicated. For one thing, chaos can be quite entertaining. It is when …

Read more

Putting out a newspaper is, on the most basic, practical level, simply a matter of repeatedly doing a series of mundane chores. Rebecca West, one most respected writers of the 20th century, put it this way: “Journalism is the ability to meet the challenge of filling space.” Like some happy Sisyphus, tending to these repetitive, unending chores generally keeps us occupied, calm, and out of the gin mills. From time to time, though, we are nearly overwhelmed by the existential weight of our unique position: steering the most-senior news organization in the mightiest nation in history through a period of turbulence more extreme than any …

Read more